Erosion
by Nythtak
Summary: "The awakening of memories from another life is not a neat, clean process." During the Wave mission, Sakura is slowly driven insane as memories (thoughtspersonalityconscious) from a foreign entity (warbattle fighting fighting always fighting the monster among monsters the beast with a human face) invade her mind.
1. Chapter 1

**. . .**

_The awakening of memories from another life is not a neat, clean process._

**. . .**

The first time it happens Sakura dismisses it because to do otherwise would _break _her.

She is standing – still standing, even as her legs quake beneath her and shivers wrack her frame – kunai in hand as she guards Tazuna even though she knows she doesn't stand a chance against an A-class missing-nin. The sword – the one he threw effortlessly just moments ago – would tear through her body like paper, and she'd be dead before she could make a sound. Her whole life amounting to that one moment, just another dead genin, never to have achieved anything – never to have gotten Sasuke-kun to even look at her.

The air is heavy with what she knows is killing intent (one of the Academy books mentions it _the user exudes pure intention to kill, having an effect on those around them to the extent of paralysing fear and visions of their own death _with a side-note saying that their jounin-sensei would teach them how to resist it), stuttering her breaths and making her tremble with terror. She is too scared to remember that her teammates are standing beside her, that Kakashi-sensei is the one who will fight Zabuza, not her. She doesn't realise that as long as Kakashi-sensei is alive he'll keep her, keep _them _safe.

All that exists is the pressure smothering her senses, the inevitable death that hovers around her almost tangibly. She is utterly certain that she is going to die, that Zabuza is going to kill her with barely a passing acknowledgment of her existence. She is going to _die. _

And suddenly the corner of her mouth is twitching up into a half-smirk. Her stance changes from a tense defensive posture to an almost languid slump, head tilting and eyelids lowering lazily. The kunai once held so stiffly in her hands is spun, twirled between her fingers like there isn't a powerful shinobi stalking her from the mist he created.

No, that's not right. She knows he's there, can sense his life force even as it saturates the air around them, that bright spark of life she is so intimately familiar with. The killing intent that had just seconds ago been almost sending her to her knees, now glides over her rather than consumes her, like the warmth of an adoring fire licking comfortably at her skin.

She has felt far more powerful intent than this; a desire to kill that would crush the hearts of the weak-willed and bite the fleeing heels of those who once thought themselves strong. She has faced demons and monsters who knew the ways of death with such intimacy that they made it an art form, a grotesque beauty they flaunted in every movement, a knowledge of just how easy – _natural _– it would be for them to utterly destroy you.

This mortal man is nothing. The power of her existence rallies against the waves of killing intent because _she will not die, not to this man, not ever _and it dissipates like a breeze beneath the might of a hurricane. The two children near her still their shaking bodies and blink in confusion, the blond far more openly than the other child. Now, there is no fear.

And then Sakura gasps, sucking in breaths like she'd been underwater for hours. She feels like she was gone but not really gone, like she was in control but she wasn't really in control, and her kunai clatters to the ground. Her vision swims and her head pounds and she wonders _what was that? _

**. . .**

_Two minds, two memories battle within a cage of flesh and soul. One is young and fragile, but this is her body and so she dominates. But the other is older, stronger, and she is patient._

**. . .**

The next time Sakura dreams, she is lying next to a lake.

_She sits up and looks around, feeling oddly tranquil in this strange place. The grass beneath her fingers is a vibrant green, the same colour as her eyes, and it spreads across the flat plain surrounding her, daisies and a few sunflowers peppering the green. There is a forest of trees – cedar, some aspen, and a single towering oak tree - and she can hear birds tweeting from their depths, leaves rustling as a faint wind blows through the area. A moon hangs overhead and it is far larger than would be natural, dominating much of the red sky. It is an odd colour, far too bright to be compared to blood yet eerie enough for her gaze to dart away._

_Her attention falls to the lake. Its black surface is disturbed by the ruins emerging in broken fingers reaching for the sky, their crumbling white stone startling against the dark water. She's never seen a structure like it before; the ruins are far larger than any building she's seen and its design is much bulkier than the houses in Konoha. They rise in peaks from the water, leaving much of the lake empty and still, like an entire city lurked beyond her sight._

_Sakura rises to her feet and inches closer to the edge of the lake, hoping to be able to peer past the surface. But with each step she takes a prickle of unease runs down her spine, an alarm ringing in her mind with such growing intensity that she slows. Her eyes remain riveted on the black water. There is something wrong with the lake, something dangerous, and her earlier tranquillity quails in favour of a growing fear._

_Sakura bites her lip before clenching her fists in determination. She steps closer, her toes only a couple of inches from the lake's end. She stares down at the black water._

_Bright, golden eyes stare back. _

Sakura screams, and wakes with her sheets tangled around her like a noose. She does not sleep for the rest of the night.

**. . .**

_Dreams reveal, dreams deceive, dreams __**die.**_

**. . .**

_**A/N: **I felt like writing something creepy, with a bunch of horror and surrealism, and this is the result. It's a bit of a twist on the whole 'OC-wakes-up-as-Sakura', a much darker version.__The OC in this is pretty much a direct contrast to my OC in _Reality's Delusion _(another OC!Sakura fic) __in terms of personality._

_I'm trying to keep Sakura as in character as I can, but since I'm writing her being terrified and going insane my accuracy may be off. Let me know if she'd drastically OOC._

_I don't own _Naruto. _I do own the OC – the one whose memories Sakura 'received' and the world the OC comes from._

_Let me know what you think so far. Chapters will be quite short for now, but as a result they're posted quicker._

_Please leave a review, and I'll try to answer any questions if you have them. _


	2. Chapter 2

Sakura doesn't _doesn't _think about black lakes or red skies or golden eyes the next day.

They find out that Zabuza is alive, that he's going to come after them again, and Sakura desperately wishes she could muster the fear she felt went first confronted with the man.

Instead, for one horrifying moment, she wants to scoff and comment on the impractically of such a wide sword – it'd be far more effective if he slimmed down the blade a bit (it is mass times velocity _squared _after all; how fast you swing it generates more force than weight), and though the circle cut near the top of the blade helped in placing the point of balance closer to the hilt resulting in some level of control, if instead it had narrowed to a point the sword would be better at lunging strikes rather than just slashes – before catching herself.

She flinches and golden eyes _do not _flash across her mind.

Kakashi-sensei teaches them to climb trees using chakra, and she is so _happy _when she manages it almost easily (_she's a good shinobi, she's not weak, she's not going insane)_. She looks to Sasuke-kun and hopes he'll be impressed, maybe even _compliment _her, but he doesn't look in her direction at all. She deflates on her branch-

"…"

-and nearly falls off when a voice murmurs indistinguishably right by her ear, a ghost leaning over her shoulder.

Frantically she looks around her for the source but there's no one nearby. Naruto and Sasuke-kun are running up their own trees – and of course Sasuke-kun gets higher than the loser – whilst Kakashi-sensei is reading his book, so it can't have been them. Besides, despite not being able to hear the words clearly the voice was definitely female, even if it wasn't soft at all.

She shivers and starts running up and down the tree, letting the lull of training drown out everything else, and pretend she doesn't hear the whispers in her head.

That night Sakura lays on her futon, struggling to keep her eyes from falling shut. But her exhaustion turns against her and her waking mind ebbs away.

_She is beside the lake again, but this time she is closer, only a few metres away. The moon has grown, just a little, and it leers down at her. She looks away._

_She is standing and makes to step back towards the safety of the trees, yet finds that she can't. Poppies twine around her ankles, somehow firmly holding her in place despite their delicate appearance. Panic rises in her and she struggles only to find that they are as unbending as steel. It is only when she moves forwards – towards the lake – that they relinquish their grip, and she stumbles but keeps her feet. _

"…_."_

_Sakura jolts before freezing in place, eyes filling with dread as she looks at the lake's surface. From this distance she can just make out a glint of gold through the inky black, like a single star against the night's canvas. She takes a slow step forward and the star splits into two, intensely bright as they watch her. _

_In those eyes she sees unimaginable horrors. _

_She sees monsters howling gleefully, their massive jaws bleeding a red liquid not their own. _

_She sees prowling demons that entice and __**twist**__, sees their inhuman joy and sadistic lust. _

_She sees humans committing evils that make vomit rise in her throat and tears burn her eyes._

_She sees heroes fall and become corrupt shadows of their former selves, and villains shed their darkness in order to become new, if faltering, light._

_She sees a land ravaged by its denizens, torn apart by war and strife, where the innocent (there are no innocent) are never spared because no one can afford mercy here. _

_She sees endless battles between gods and mortals that tear the earth asunder, sees humanity in all its splendour and horror, sees what it truly means to be inhuman._

_And she sees a woman standing amongst the carnage, golden eyes bright. _

"…"

When she wakes Sakura is crying and she doesn't know why _(she __**doesn't**__). _

**. . .**

Sakura doesn't go to sleep the next night. She pinches herself every time she feels herself drifting off, eventually holding a kunai tightly in her hand so that the pain keeps her awake. For some reason the thin stream of blood trailing down her palm doesn't bother her as much as it once did.

In the morning she wraps it up and heads out to guard Tazuna, stifling yawns and hoping her concealer covers up the shadows developing under her eyes. If she is unusually subdued her team don't say anything, though she imagines she can feel Sasuke-kun giving her a concerned look. It's a nice hope and it makes her smile, just a little, before she hears _it._

_Boom. __**Boom. **__Boom. __**Boom. **__Boom. __**Boom. **_

She looks around but no one else is reacting, and she realises that just like the voice the sound echoes only within the confines of her mind. They sound like the beats of a drum, a firm strike followed by a heavier one, almost imitating the heartbeat. _War drums _she thinks and isn't sure why.

She bites her lip and closes her eyes and tries to ignore it.

_(Boom. __**Boom. **__Boom. __**Boom.)**_

**. . .**

Sakura walks beside Tazuna as he makes his way through the town. It's far smaller than Konoha, and unmistakably poorer – there are people walking around in clothing that barely holds itself together, limbs thin and faces gaunt as they search for work none can afford to hire. Some slump hopelessly in alleys or root through bins with a sullen desperation, and children beg for money and food from those barely surviving themselves.

Sympathy swells within her for a few seconds before fading away. She has seen far worse than this. She's seen people so thin their skin hangs from their bones, people so hungry they tear chunks of flesh from their own body when they're too weak to do the same to others. She's seen children screaming at the people passing them, crawling if they can't walk and throwing themselves with hungry mouths and empty eyes at anything living, barely human enough to feel the pain when they are kicked away.

These people are starving but they are not _starving, _and she will not spare her pity for the unworthy, if she should spare it at all. If their situation is so terrible they should _do something _about it. It's what she did, what her followers did, what her enemies did – at least the ones she respected. Become strong, _fight, _and survive to live another day.

Sakura comes back to herself, the foreign thoughts melting away, and she feels like she's going to be sick (_Boom.__** Boom. **__Boom. __**Boom)**__. _

**. . .**

**A/N: **_As always, I'd appreciate any feedback. _


End file.
